Daily Archives: January 28, 2009

ARMEY: I’m so damn glad that you can never be my wife because I surely wouldn’t have to listen to that prattle from you every day.

WALSH: Boy, that makes two of us sir. That was really an outstanding comment.

ARMEY: That’s what I’m talking about — she’s making a political malarkey here.

Dick Armey must belong to the “He-Man-Woman-Hater Club.” But his entire display of rudeness should offend any person of civility, regardless of their sex. And at no point does he apologize for what he said. And this is what the Republican Party has to offer as an alternative? A “Shut up, you hag!” approach to political discourse? Is it any wonder they lost so big in the last elections? As Bob Herbert said later, this man owes Joan Walsh, and the viewers of Hardball an apology for his offensive remarks. And it better not be one of “to anyone who was offended by what I said, I’m sorry.” This time, the apology has to show that he understand why what he specifically said and did was wrong. Anything less is not a true apology.

Getting a peace deal in the Middle East is such a priority to President Obama that his first foreign calls on his first day in office were to Arab and Israeli leaders. And on day two, the president made former Senator George Mitchell his special envoy for Middle East peace. Mr. Obama wants to shore up the ceasefire in Gaza, but a lasting peace really depends on the West Bank where Palestinians had hoped to create their state. The problem is, even before Israel invaded Gaza, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians had concluded that peace between them was no longer possible, that history had passed it by. For peace to have a chance, Israel would have to withdraw from the West Bank, which would then become the Palestinian state.

It’s known as the “two-state” solution. But, while negotiations have been going on for 15 years, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have moved in to occupy the West Bank. Palestinians say they can’t have a state with Israeli settlers all over it, which the settlers say is precisely the idea….

A dispute has emerged among NATO High Command in Afghanistan regarding the conditions under which alliance troops can use deadly violence against those identified as insurgents. In a classified document, which SPIEGEL has obtained, NATO’s top commander, US General John Craddock, has issued a “guidance” providing NATO troops with the authority “to attack directly drug producers and facilities throughout Afghanistan.”

According to the document, deadly force is to be used even in those cases where there is no proof that suspects are actively engaged in the armed resistance against the Afghanistan government or against Western troops. It is “no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective,” Craddock writes.